


A Hundred Visions and Revisions, Decisions and Indecisions

by TobermorianSass



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Unhealthy Relationships, breath play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-24
Updated: 2015-07-24
Packaged: 2018-04-11 00:32:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4413971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TobermorianSass/pseuds/TobermorianSass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A history of Pansy Parkinson and Zacharias Smith's relationship, from the second wizarding war till the day they realized that despite their similarities, they were really nothing like each other at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Hundred Visions and Revisions, Decisions and Indecisions

Pansy looks at the snub-nosed, haughty boy with robes trimmed in Hufflepuff colours and sneers.

“I thought Hufflepuffs didn’t run,” she says, coolly, ignoring the way Daphne’s nails dig sharply into her wrist in a warning, or perhaps a command to be polite. _Dear old Daphne_ , thinks Pansy, _she should have learnt by now_ –

“I wasn’t aware Slytherin had a monopoly on cowardice,” he replies dryly, “Now if you please –“

Daphne pulls Pansy aside, with a low whispered adjuration to let things be, and Pansy watches him disappear through the doorway with narrowed eyes. She files it away for later – one day, some day, though that doesn’t seem very likely as things stand.

She forgets about it soon enough, that is, everything except the gold and black trimming on his robes.

Pansy remembers that, even when Daphne drags her to Paris.

* * *

**I. OBLIVIATE**

“Are you going to tell Lisa you stunned and obliviated her?” Pansy asks him sotto voce, as he looks at the sandwiches on the deli counter, “Or shall I?”

If he’s surprised by her materializing out of nowhere or by the things she’s insinuating, he doesn’t show it. He places his order in French that could pass for flawless, but he doesn’t roll his ‘r’s quite right. A dead giveaway really, she thinks; the edge of her mouth twisting up in a smirk.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says evenly then and in English that despite two years speaking nothing but French, remains remarkably unaccented. Another dead give away. Or maybe a gift. Pansy can’t quite decide. At any rate it means home isn’t an option for him yet.

“The poor thing’s been quite ill,” she says, as though she’s merely noting the weather, “It doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together, not when there’s a nice big gap in her memories dating back to a week ago –“

He exits the café, not even bothering to see whether Pansy follows.

She does.

“ – One week ago,” she says, speculatively, “Isn’t that when the rumours of Rosier and Selwyn narrowly escaping MI7 first surfaced?”

Pansy watches in fascination as the mask slowly crumbles underneath her probing. It starts simply enough. The vein in his jaw throbs a little too much.  He undoes the packaging on his sandwich anyway and continues walking at a brisk pace, but it’s a sign. The _sign_.

“Your uncle,” she says, all too innocently, “Charles Selwyn, wasn’t he?”

The air is knocked out of her when he slams her roughly into a wall and glares down at her, the vein in his jaw throbbing dangerously. Pansy would laugh at the sight – him glowering at her, waving a sandwich in one hand, as though that’s supposed to be _threatening_ – if some little part of her wasn’t bent on insisting that yes, she could do with this happening on a regular basis.

“What are you going to do?” she sneers, “Obliviate me in broad daylight in flagrant disregard of the Statute of Secrecy?” she laughs, “I don’t think you can afford to.”

She notes the precise moment at which the hit goes home. The way his jaw tightens first and his eyes grow dark – _if looks could kill_ – and then the _fear_ –

Always the fear. She could almost feel … pity… if it hadn’t become a fact of life for all of them. _Elbows in. Heads down. Small and invisible._ And when the government comes knocking, with your genealogy in one hand, along with a collection of every wrong thing you’ve said over the years and a demand that you join their manhunt – well, you join the service without arguing. Unless you’re one of the poor sods who thinks having yourself tarred and feathered by the press back home – and all the inquiries and trials and never-ending questions and arrests – is worth the hassle.

That’s how the British Ministry of Magic digs its claws into French soil: in the form of scared teenagers and young adults who made the mistake of running – _running their mouths_ – instead of standing their ground and fighting.

Maybe she should feel sorry for him, but really if she’s honest, she feels nothing but satisfaction because this, at least, tells her he’s one of _them_.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, finally, letting her go.

She makes a show of smoothing her clothes out, “I do know,” she answers, “But let’s pretend I don’t. Why don’t you explain it to me?”

“She must have got lost and run into one of them without me,” he answers, cool and collected – behind the mask again.

There are several things she could say in reply to this. She could call him out on his obvious and badly-crafted lie – _honestly, these Hufflepuffs, amateurs_ , some part of her brain whispers. She could needle him further. See what he does when he breaks.

But then, he’d expect that, wouldn’t he?

She smiles at him instead, “Of course. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that.”

Credit where credit is due – his eyes don’t even narrow in suspicion. There isn’t the slightest bit of change to the expression on his face, he simply looks at her like he’s a six foot something potato.

“It must be the heat,” he says, eventually, “I hear it gets to your brain after a while. Slows the mind.”

Pansy really should hex him for that, but she lets him turn around and leave instead.

“For what it’s worth,” she says, raising her voice, “I think you did the right thing.”

A two-fingered salute is the only reply she gets. Pansy glares viciously at his departing figure as though her glares will strike him dead. Somehow.

So _that’s_ how it is then.

* * *

Two weeks later, Zacharias thinks it’s time to put an end to this whole mess – thing, he isn’t quite sure what he’s supposed to call it – he’s in. Or well, that Pansy insists on dragging him into, turning up every now and then and needling at him with scientific precision until he feels the urge to slam her into a wall and choke the living daylights out of her.

He’s a bounder and a cad and a traitor in yellow and black, not silver and green, he knows that. He doesn’t need someone else reminding him of that with unfailing regularity. His conscience does that enough for him.

“Pansy,” he says, catching her outside _Beaumonde_ , “We need to talk.”

He watches her contemplate him and wonders if she’ll decide to walk away with Daphne instead. There’s really no reason why she should listen to any of this. She has the upper hand in this game – mess – thing – whatever they have going on, as far as getting on nerves are concerned. At least, he thinks so. Maybe she’s just better at hiding it because that’s how Slytherins are socialized.

She shrugs and waves at Daphne and Tracey to go on without her.

“You know you can come in?” she says, idly smoothing the collars of his robes for him.

“A truce,” he says carefully, “I don’t know why you have it in for me, but I’d like to be left alone, thanks.”

“Really?” she says, unconvinced and he’s certain it isn’t an accident that her hand slips inside his collar and rests on his collarbone.

“I don’t know what you lot do for kicks in Slytherin,” he says, his voice unwavering, although her hand is warm and well, really quite distracting, “But being needled constantly for someone else’s kicks isn’t my idea of a good time.”

Pansy removes her hand and crosses her arms.

“Why?” she asks.

He glares at her.

“I’m not one of your lot,” he says.

“Well of course you aren’t. You roll your ‘r’s all wrong,” she replies, “Got to get my kicks somehow, don’t I?”

Zacharias thinks about how nice it would be to throttle her. Something to wipe that self-satisfied smirk off her face, as though she knows him in all his minutiae – which she doesn’t, but Merlin it makes him nervy and wonder if he’s really that easy to read.

“It’s exactly what they want,” he tells her instead.

Pansy eyes him dispassionately.

“You’re not stupid at least.”

“Thanks,” he replies.

“Smarter than Draco, at any rate,” she concludes and toys with the top-button of his robes, “Possibly even more amusing.”

“I’m flattered.”

Pansy smiles at him predatorily and he isn’t in the least bit surprised when she pops the button open.

“There,” she says, casually proceeding to unbutton the top two buttons his shirt, “Much more stylish – at least things won’t be boring, I hate being bored, don’t you?”

“With a vengeance,” he agrees.

“Well then,” she says sweetly, “You can buy me drinks then.”

He isn’t very surprised at all when they land up at her flat later on that night and she tells him he looks even more stylish – aesthetically pleasing, is the term she uses and it takes all his will-power not to snort derisively at that – when he’s hot, bothered and déshabillé.

* * *

She cuts her hair short in a sharp bob that makes her look quite Parisian. He painstakingly learns how to roll his ‘r’s and buys himself four or five different sets of robes and suits in Paris. The act of disappearing mandates an ability to blend in flawlessly among the thousands of fashionable wix of Paris and not stand out like a sore thumb. It’s an act they’ve all been preparing for with various degrees of success.

He still isn’t quite sure _who_ they’re disappearing from – themselves, or the Ministry.

One day he looks in the mirror and well, he doesn’t quite recognize the face in front of him. The lines are harsher. Older. _Foreign_.

Pansy takes to wearing black turtlenecks and smoking Virginia Slims – Merlin knows where she procured those from – and it’s so obvious, it shouldn’t work, but it does. The French, they all flock to her and she simpers so convincingly that no one seems to care when they find their private lives plastered all over the gossip rags.

“Vivienne Leclère-Tantomile?” she asks him, one day, “Really?”

“Vivienne de Ténèbre,” he corrects her, “She’s married.”

“I’d have never put you down as a homewrecker,” she tells him.

“I have hidden depths,” he replies and Merlin, Pansy thinks, that’s a _smirk_ _–_ and that’s _new_ , or if it isn’t, she’s never noticed it before.

She files it away, with a note to herself to unpack its meaning later.

* * *

The best way to disappear, he theorizes, is to do something so outrageous that everyone forgets that any previous iterations of oneself ever existed. This is contrary to everything that Pansy’s been telling him and really, he’s surprised that with all her Slytherin audacity and cunning, she hasn’t thought of this, but maybe it’s only because it’s a plan with so very little chance of success that she dismissed it out of hand.

Well, there’s a reason people call Hufflepuffs tenacious buggers.

He watches with satisfaction, the way her face twists into something torn between anger and envy as she reads the headlines of _Le Monde Magique_.

“Bastard,” she says viciously, “I thought you were on our side.”

He shrugs, “I’m on _my_ side.”

“I only have to remind them where you were and what you were doing on the night that Evan Rosier and Charles Selwyn slipped through the fingers of the _G_ _endarmerie Magique_ and MI7 for them to drop you like a hot potato.”

Zacharias smirks as he stirs the cream into his coffee, an incurably un-French-like habit of his that even the most careful attempts at assimilation have never been able to wean him of.

“Both you and I know that if you do they’ll be more inclined to be sympathetic to me – a poor young boy, far away from home, emotional pressure – the kind of story they’d swallow in delight.”

Pansy makes a noise of disgust, “I thought you were better than this.”

“No,” he says, “I’m a traitor, remember?”

He smiles sweetly at her and notes the way her right hand twitches reflexively.

“Anyway,” he says after a while, “Rita Skeeter’s retiring.”

“Rita Skeeter’s always retiring,” she says disparagingly, “She never does.”

“You could ease the process,” he says, with studied nonchalance, “Bring your talents back to England.”

“I don’t want your handouts,” she snaps.

Zacharias regards her with something approaching near fondness, “Think of it as a token of friendship.”

Pansy folds her paper and regards him, her head tilted to the left.

“What do you want from me? In return,” she says, “For this?”

“Amazingly,” he says, “Nothing. Your company would be nice. Make the place feel more like home.”

“You’re closer to Tracey,” she points out.

“Tracey isn’t you,” he says simply.

Pansy turns the word over and over, examining it from every angle. _Friendship_. So bloody Hufflepuff.

But _Merlin_ , those eight months – six holed up in a prison in the Czech Republic and two Salazar knows where, blowing up a drug smuggling ring in the French Riviera – have done – something. She thinks about the gold and black trimming on his robes, that summer evening three years ago and concludes that the man sitting opposite her now would look hideously out of place in them. Like they were an unnatural skin, forced on him by circumstance.

Pansy needs answers.

“All right,” she says and watches as he smiles, genuinely, at her.

* * *

**II. APARECIUM**

It’s hard to explain just _what’s_ going on. It should be straightforward and it is, mostly, but then every now and then something slips through that unnerves her and Pansy isn’t quite sure if this is a game they’re playing, like it was before, or if it’s something else entirely. The stakes have been shifted and she can’t quite put her finger on _how_.

She runs her hand up his chest and lets it linger on his throat.

Really, he should pull away. Grab her wrists and twist her underneath him, but he simply tilts his head up in an action of – well, submission. There’s no other word for it. Like a _dog_ submitting to its pack leader. Like he’s _begging_ for her to do it.

It’s not that this disgusts her – Theo and Daph do it all the time, she knows, but then, Theo and Daph have known each other since they were babes-in-arms. Zacharias and she – they’re strangers, or as good as strangers, despite the number of times they’ve tumbled into bed with each other; despite their long – flirtation? game? she isn’t sure what she ought to call it at all. _Trust_ – trust is such a _Hufflepuff_ concept, that it makes her lip curl in disdain.

She runs her thumb over his Adam’s apple and notes the way his breath hitches.

“We can not do this, if you don’t want to,” he whispers.

Pansy’s left hand joins her right on his throat, “Who says I haven’t dreamt of this moment?”

He grins and Pansy presses down, watching the way his grin slowly fades and his eyes fall shut.

It would be so _easy_ , she thinks, to go just a little bit too far and leave him with the humiliation of his death. So easy, the easiest way to banish him from their favour – _death by erotic asphyxiation_. So easy to just press a little bit too hard, a little too long and watch him thrash around helplessly. Entirely at her mercy.

The thought, well, it makes her burn. The way _he_ makes her burn.

But that would be precisely what they’d expect of her. What he’d expect of her. Slytherin, after all – snakes don’t play fair. There really is no way out of it – no version of this in which he doesn’t win.

So she rocks her hips hard against his instead and watches as his head falls back, as he thrashes and twists underneath her and even though it all builds up inside her, like a hot and cold burning, low in her stomach, she still watches - watches the way his face turns puffy and his rasping turn into desperate gasps. Watches in malicious satisfaction when he finally comes, ragged and gasping and the colour slowly draining from his face – even though there are bloodied nail marks on her thighs, even though she’s coming as well, dragged over the edge by the way he looks completely destroyed.

Watches as he grins up at her, though his breath is still ragged and uneven, though her hands are still on his throat; though she could, if she wanted to, kill him.

* * *

It doesn’t take very long for them to carve themselves a little niche, doing maximum damage to the reputations of various people with minimum effort and no consequences. Pansy isn’t _quite_ sure how they got here, but then she’s always had a keen nose for gossip and an unpleasant ability to nose around until she knows all the sordid details of everyone’s lives and Zacharias simply won’t take no for an answer even when he’s tossing out the most difficult questions, so maybe it isn’t surprising at all that they end up being responsible for Peregrine Derrick getting fired from office.

It’s not like they were _trying_ , only that Perry walks in on them when she has her hands on Zacharias’ throat and her legs wrapped around his waist – she struggles not to laugh at the way Perry stares, with his eyes bulging out unnaturally like a bloody frog, like he’s never seen anyone have a quickie in the office bathroom.

“What are you staring at?” Zacharias demands, rather abrasively, Pansy thinks, but then without that abrasiveness he wouldn’t be him at all – he’d be another Blaise or Theo or hell, even Draco.

Derrick turns a curious shade of purple and opens his mouth to stutter out a reply, but he only gets as far as “public space” before Pansy cuts him off.

“Derrick,” Pansy tells him, “You wouldn’t want to be accused of voyeurism, would you now? Not after what happened to Warrington?”

He blanches and runs out immediately.

“What a weasel,” Zacharias says, afterwards, while he buttons his robes, “Merlin but it’d be fun to put him on the hot seat.”

“So why don’t we?” she says before she can catch herself, “Winner takes the loser on a yachting holiday in the Mediterranean – all expenses paid, of course.”

“That implies you think you’re going to win,” he replies, “I could get him fired in half the time.”

“Pick your own victim,” she says, “There’s no point in both of us hounding the same person.”

“So you _are_ scared,” he says lightly.

Pansy rolls her eyes.

“Your own victim, Smith,” she says, “Person who causes the maximum amount of damage wins.”

It’s surprisingly easy, she discovers later, to lay a false trail filled with half-truths and vague insinuations for people to pick up. All it takes is a casual word dropped in Edie Blishwick’s ear, over cocktails at _The Inferno._ Nothing very extraordinary, she merely wonders – aloud – why Derrick’s allowed to do political commentary when it’s clear he has about as much sense as a blundering Erumpent.

“Probably with half the brains,” she tells Edie, “I mean the way he wanders around, bug-eyed and his mouth hanging open – it’s like working with someone whose brain's been pulverized by Fairy Dust.”

Edie’s eyes glitter dangerously and Pansy leans back in satisfaction. _Your move, Smith_ , she thinks, because really, there’s no way he can conceivably match up to this. This is _her_ territory, her strongest suite. This is _precisely_ what seven years in Slytherin prepare one for – Merlin knows what they learn down in Hufflepuff. Probably how to hang around and look handsome and virtuous, if Diggory was anything to go by.

In a few days, she catches more than a few sly glances thrown Peregrine Derrick’s way. In a week, Britain’s elite are buzzing with excitement about the latest scandal. In a week and a half, Kitty Perkins corners her and demands to know why she hasn’t covered the Derrick story.

“I was under the impression that everyone except our colleagues were fair game,” she replies.

Kitty waves her hand airily, “Cuffe’s slipping him his papers anyway – can’t have that sort of person hanging around _The Prophet_. I’m counting on you Parkinson.”

By the end of the week, Derrick’s turfed out on his ear and everyone knows for _certain_ that not only is he an incurable drug addict, but apparently he’s also a Peeping Tom – the sort of bloke who goes around watching witches change in dressing rooms.

It’s both thrilling and terrifying to watch it happen – the way they’re all so eager to tear him down. Pansy finds herself wondering if they’d do the same to her if anything about _her_ got out.

_Parkinson, that slag, I hear she likes to strangle blokes in bed._

_I hear she likes to have sex in public bathrooms._

_I heard she was a Death Eater_.

Pansy pushes those thoughts away and taunts Zacharias with her certain victory instead.

* * *

It takes about three days before Zacharias remembers just how much he hates Ginny Weasley and he wonders if it’s worth the effort, trying to strike them all where it hurts most, only to conclude that it is. It’s the Holyhead Harpies versus Caerphilly Catapults and Salazar’s snakes, he isn’t even _doing_ anything, just chatting with Tamsin Applebee, when Weasley finds it necessary to sneer at him.

“Here to steal our game-plan, Smith?” she demands.

Zacharias forces himself to be polite, only because Tamsin’s nails dig sharply into his wrist and she shakes her head imperceptibly.

“Amazingly enough,” he says coolly, “There is such a thing as a journalists code of ethics.”

“I know you lot down at _The Prophet_ ,” Ginny says darkly, “You wouldn’t know ethics if they hit you in the face.”

Something snaps in Zacharias, just then and he remembers the bet with Pansy. He might as well have a few genuine crimes to his name if they’re all so determined to hang, draw and quarter him, he reasons – he doesn’t even _work_ for the bloody _Prophet_ , he just happens to spend a lot of time in their bathrooms. With Pansy. _The Wixenomist_ has a bloody good rep, as far as ethics goes, but he’s _him_ and of course, someone like him – who ran away from a war instead of staying and fighting – couldn’t possibly ever do anything good with their lives, ever.

Michael, he thinks, should prove to be an easy enough nut to crack; enough to get the ball rolling at any rate.

Pansy calls it a tie two weeks later, to his surprise. He wonders if this, coinciding with Ginny punching him in the face – which only cements the gutter press’ belief that all the rumours about Ginny’s wild philandering ways are true (Potter even breaks up with her, for three whole days) – is Pansy showing signs of growing a heart. She even agrees to split the cost of their yachting holiday and actually coos over his broken nose before fixing it.

“You know, _Zach_ ,” and it’s not the first time she’s called him _Zach_ and not _Smith_ , but there’s something slightly different to it this time and he can’t quite put his finger on it – admiration? affection? satisfaction? it’s hard to tell – “I do believe you’re one of us now.”

He laughs and kisses her, but he ponders this much later when they’re on the way to Venice.

Is he really one of them? He isn’t so sure he is.

* * *

“So,” Pansy says, one night, as they lie side by side on a cramped (in his opinion) little bunk on the yacht the Zabinis have lent them, “Does this mean we’re a proper couple now?”

Zacharias considers her, her dark eyes watching him carefully and her face, oddly enough, softer now than when he first met her again in Paris.

“If that’s your definition,” he says seriously, “Don’t take everyone else’s word for it though – what do you want?”

He knows, just as well as she does, at least judging by the pensive look on her face, that this is their death knell. They can either change the stakes which means they’ll grind painfully to a halt or end up shackled to each other or they could fall into a nice and neat pattern from here on, because they’re used to each other by now and there are no more games they can play.

“Well it’s been four years,” she says, “And you haven’t bored me to death yet.”

“You really do know how to flatter a bloke,” he says dryly.

She smacks him playfully, “What about you – what do you want?”

“The most beautiful woman in the world,” he replies flippantly, “But you know, you’ll do.”

“Arse,” she says and pinches him hard.

Later when she’s asleep he turns the question over and over. What _does_ he want? He concludes that the answer is simultaneously both simple and elliptical. He wants answers; but all he ever finds is one question after the other.

* * *

**III. INCENDIO**

“You know,” Pansy says one day, about four months after they’ve moved in together, “People keep asking me when we’re getting married.”

By people she means Daphne and Daphne only asks her because she’s been unusually well-behaved in this relationship – or as Daphne puts it, happy. Pansy fobs her off with the excuse that life is never boring when Zacharias is around, but the question niggles at her after that and Pansy finds herself wondering how Zacharias would react if she ever threw one of those tantrums that Draco had to deal with. She looks at him, idly contemplating the idea that he might grab her firmly by the arm and hiss at her to shut up. Something interesting, or at least, something that lets her know that he has all these terrible thoughts and impulses roiling underneath the surface of his skin that he only controls by exercising the greatest amount of willpower.

Sometimes Pansy wants to drive her nails into his face, or threaten to tell Lisa about that night – but that would mean _losing_ and Slytherins don’t lose. Ever.

“ _Do_ you want to get married?” he asks her curiously.

“I think marriage is horribly old-fashioned and disgusting,” she replies without meaning it at all, carelessly dabbing at her fingernails as she applies a hideous viridian coat of nail-polish.

“That’s an extreme position to take,” he says.

“Don’t tell me you’re in favour of marriage?” she sneers.

“I quite like it,” he replies mildly, “Or the idea of it, at any rate. You find someone you love and you settle down with them – it’s all very touching. Whether marriage and _I_ are suited to each other is an entirely different question.”

“Salazar’s tits, you’re so _Hufflepuff_ about it.”

“I wasn’t aware that fair-mindedness was a sign of character deficiency.”

“No,” she says sadly, “Of course you aren’t.”

* * *

Sometimes the prickling underneath her skin grows too much for her to handle. Pansy reduces Draco to tears in public, one day and she decides that this – the sensation she feels, watching Draco blub in the middle of Diagon Alley because she’d recited an embellished litany of his sins to a curious and predatory public – is better than getting drunk, or even putting her hands around Zacharias’ throat and throttling him. She considers trying this out on Blaise, because really, wouldn’t it be a triumph for her if she could bring Blaise – stoic, enigmatic Blaise – to tears in public with nothing more than her catty tongue?

But then she spots Zacharias and he’s with Goldstein and his friends, blissfully unaware of the fact that she’s just made Draco Malfoy cry in public. His head is thrown back and he’s laughing and Pansy wonders idly if she could make him cry, ever.

She’s never seen him cry.

* * *

The first time Zacharias attempts to tap into the Smith vault at Gringotts, his father glares at him suspiciously and demands to know why his own vault isn’t enough.

Zacharias feels all of five, trying to explain that this is how the game goes – his girlfriend flings champagne in his face in public because he’s late to a date and he buys her a necklace to make up for being a slack boyfriend. David Smith seems to think this is a frivolous use of the Smith family account and refuses to hand over the key, which puts Zacharias back at square one and Zacharias thinks about how nice it would be to strangle Pansy until Michael points out that he could just get her a paste necklace.

“There’s no point wasting money on birds,” he says with the disconsolation of a man who’s been in a grand total of four serious relationships, all of which have ended badly.

This could be really easy, Zacharias thinks, as he picks out a silver Art Deco necklace with paste diamonds. It’s a convincing fake, convincing enough that it takes in Pansy – her eyes light up in delight and she flings her arms around his neck, murmuring all kinds of filthy things in his ear.

He could get used to this, he thinks. Maximum benefits for minimum effort.

Only, of course, Pansy discovers they’re paste.

“You’re like Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton,” Justin tells him later, when Zacharias turns up on his doorstep because Pansy’s locked him out for the fifth time that week, “Only without the cheating. Or the alcoholism. Or at least I think without the alcoholism. Also you’re kind of an arse for buying her fake diamonds.”

“Justin,” Zacharias says, tired – and he feels bad for doing so, because it’s three in the bloody morning and Justin’s the only one who’s been even mildly sympathetic; everyone else seems to think it’s a great lark – “Shut up. Please.”

“Sorry,” says Justin and then adds, hesitantly, “Do you - would you - tea?”

Zacharias accepts, gratefully.

It isn’t that he doesn’t care for Pansy. They have the same nightmares – or ones that are similar enough for them to understand each other. People call them the same names. _Coward. Deserter. Traitor_. It’s not really an experience that any of his other friends can understand. More often than not, they’re the ones tossing those names at him, without quite realizing what they’re doing.

But Pansy has _impulses_ and try as he might, he can’t understand them. All of this, he thinks, is one of those impulses but he doesn’t know the whys and the wherefores of it, at least not enough to figure out the rules of this new game so he can play it to its end. If he knew the rules, the stakes – he suspects it has something to do with Pansy making Draco cry two weeks ago, but he can’t imagine why she fancies she’d ever be able to make him cry – then he could play and _win_.

This state of uncertainty - of  _not knowing_  - it pisses him off.

Justin brings him tea and Zacharias pushes all of these thoughts out of his mind. Including the little niggling one which tells him that in the four years they’ve been together, Pansy’s never made him tea.

* * *

If Smith was literally _anyone_ else, Pansy reflects, he’d have done _something_ by now. Thrown a tantrum, if he was Draco. Shagged Justin, if he was Blaise. Lectured her, if he was Theodore. But Smith is Smith and Smith is a confounding variable – or maybe a series of paradoxes – that disrupts the orderly functioning of her universe and throws it into chaos. It’s probably why she was attracted to him in the first place. A boy in Hufflepuff robes running away from the battle instead of standing and fighting. A boy in Hufflepuff robes obliviating his partner so that his uncle could escape the long arm of the law. So _immoral_.

So really, she shouldn’t be surprised the he buys her paste diamonds and remains stoically unmoved when she kicks him out of their flat every other day. Like he _expects_ it and he’s resigned to his fate. And then when she lets him back in, there are no angry recriminations, just a casual apology she’s supposed to swallow and Merlin, he still tilts his head up at night like she won’t kill him.

She could, but she doesn’t fancy the ensuing manslaughter charges.

Instead, she relishes the sensation of chopping at his robes – wool with a super 120 thread count – the muggle way, with scissors.  There’s little that the muggles do right, but Pansy has to admit, this is much more cathartic than a casual _diffindo_. Something about feeling the smooth fabric give way underneath the blades and the crunching noise it makes – like it’s _him_ , because she can’t do this to _him_.

He stares sadly at his robes – the ones she’s hung from the window of their town flat, so he can see what she’s done – and he just looks. Resigned. He doesn’t even lose his temper, just draws the robes in and sighs as he examines the damage.

“I bought them in Paris,” he sighs.

“I helped you,” she replies defiantly, “Any other girl would have done far worse in my place.”

He mutters something underneath his breath which she thinks might be, “I can’t see Susan doing any of this.”

But then Susan is a Hufflepuff and if Daphne was in Pansy’s place, Daphne would have departed with at least half of Zacharias’ wealth and some _real_ diamonds.

“I’ve seen the way you look at Justin,” she tells him instead.

“He’s a fit bloke,” he agrees serenely, “You know, if they ever turf you out of _The Prophet_ you should look into getting a job as a milliner, I’m sure they’d be delighted to have someone as skilled with scissors as you are.”

Pansy throws the scissors at his head, willing him to fight her, but he laughs as he ducks and then kisses her as though she hasn’t just destroyed one hundred galleons worth of his clothing. No fights, no scolding, no retribution. Like it’s a bloody joke.

Pansy wants to scream.

The next time she decides she wants to destroy one of his Egyptian cotton shirts, she finds he’s put some kind of bloody charm on his wardrobe that only allows him into it.

Pansy really does scream this time, and then she sets their bed on fire in the hope that this will provoke some kind of reaction out of Zacharias.

“You know,” he says that evening as he surveys the smouldering remains of their bed, “You could have just told me I should kip over at Justin’s.”

He turns on his heel and he doesn’t even slam the door on his way out.

Maybe, Pansy thinks, she’s been underestimating him all this while.

* * *

Zacharias fancies himself a patient man. Getting people to answer one’s questions demands patience, after all, as does finding answers – and these are two things he’s discovered a knack for (even if he _did_ fail at getting answers from Potter and co., but then it’s impossible to persevere when threatened with a fist or a wand). But he’s never pretended to be _good-tempered_ and right now, his patience is wearing very, _very_ thin.

The last straw, as it turns out, isn’t Pansy needling him over Justin – not that he’s even _flirted_ with Justin, ever, and even _Ernie_ agrees that his behaviour has been impeccable – but his grandfather’s Aston Martin.

There isn't much that he's emotionally attached to - he's a firm believer in the idea that physical possessions and attachments are transient and that it's the intangible which matters far more than the tangible - but his grandfather was the only semi-decent family member he had and also,  _it's an Aston bloody Martin_. 

He’s on his way back from the Leaky, after an evening out with the lads when he sees her attacking his Aston. She’s wearing robes, but for some reason she's left them open and Michael and Anthony get an eyeful – and god, Zacharias wants to sink into the ground because she’s only in her knickers – before Anthony hastily drags a cackling Michael back down the street. Somewhere along the way, she’s acquired a beater’s bat and he winces as one of the headlights shatters as she smashes her bat into the car with scientific precision.

“Oi,” he shouts, as he runs up to her, “What the _fuck_ do you think you’re doing?”

“I hate muggle things,” she replies, her eyes glinting dangerously at him.

He grabs her roughly by her arm, twists it behind her and marches her back into the building and up the stairs to their flat.

“That’s my grandfather’s car,” he hisses, unceremoniously pushing her inside the flat.

She trips and lands sprawling on the floor, but he doesn’t even bother with helping her up – he simply storms off in the direction of the bedroom and Pansy scrambles to her feet so she can follow him.

“You hate your family.”

“It doesn’t bloody matter,” he retorts, pulling clothes out of his wardrobe and tossing them into his trunk.

“You’re breaking up with me over a _car_?” she shrieks.

“It’s not a fucking _car_ ,” he says with forced calm, “It’s a _vintage Aston Martin_ – which, I suppose, means nothing to you because you’re one of those pureblood snots who genuinely believes that muggles are some kind of deficient species of monkey, besides which you have _no taste_ and couldn’t possibly appreciate beauty if it smacked you in the face –“

“A _muggle_ -sympathizer,” she says in disgust, “I should have known. You’re just as bad as precious Potter and his gang. A blood-traitor. Mudblood-lover.”

She notes, with triumph, the way he pauses infinitesimally before tossing the last of his robes in and slamming the trunk shut.

“I think I told you once,” he says, his face completely blank and shuttered, “That you and I were very different kinds of traitors.”

Her eyes narrow as he pauses, searching for the right words to continue.

“I’m not one of your lot,” he says as gently as he can, because this is what hours of soul-searching while sleeping over at Justin’s place have told him. At the end of it all, despite their similarities, he discomfits her – at the end of it all, she remains convinced she'd done the right thing, running away, while he beats himself up over it over and over again; she thinks he did right letting his uncle go, but he _knows_ he did wrong. In the end, it’s Ernie and Justin’s forgiveness - Justin's assurance that being a coward isn't a crime - that lets him know that he’s fine – he’s not a _bad_ person – and not hers.

“I’ve never been one of your lot,” he says, and then hauls his trunk out the door and out their flat.

* * *

“I hate you,” she yells, hanging out of the window.

A two-fingered salute is the only reply she gets.

* * *

**IV. FINITE INCANTATEM**

A few months later, Pansy sends Zacharias a cryptic note –

 _You win_ , is all it says.

* * *

Zacharias gets her owl at four in the morning and just for that, he contemplates replying with an equally cryptic _it’s not about winning_ , _not everything’s a bloody competition Parkinson_.

“Leave it mate,” Michael advises him, “Once they get their claws back in you, they won’t let you go.”

Zacharias is skeptical of this advice, considering that Michael’s advice has been cobbled together from a mixture of jaded interactions with the fairer sex and whatever he’s gleaned from years of reading _Wizard’s Quarterly_. But Anthony concurs, at least on the not replying part and Anthony, at least, is fair-minded and mostly quite sensible.

“I mean if you reply it’ll be doing exactly what you say she shouldn’t,” Justin points out, "You'll be playing into her hands."

Justin's perspicacity can be annoying sometimes and Zacharias really  _does_ want to send the reply, but he's a patient man and he's better than this; he doesn't  _have_ to have the last word - no, he does, but this time, just this time he lets it go, if only so that Anthony and Justin stop frowning disapprovingly at him.

He sends the owl off, four days later.

* * *

Pansy gets the owl, but no reply. At least, not until a month later, when she’s out at Fortescue’s with Tracey and she sees Zacharias with an unidentifiable witch on his arm, strolling along Diagon Alley.

It takes two years for the string of desultory witches and wizards to come to an end and it's only when someone hands in a photo of Zacharias and Justin snogging at the Potter-Weasley wedding to _The Prophet_  that Pansy feels something approaching satisfaction.

 _I win after all_ , she thinks, triumphantly.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by a conversation with [memorde](http://archiveofourown.org/users/memorde) about what a Zacharias Smith/Pansy Parkinson fic could look like and then it all got out of hand from there.


End file.
